1. Field of the Invention
The invention generally relates to a method of using multiple operating systems (OS) and an application thereof, and more particularly, to a method for switching OS and an electronic apparatus using the same.
2. Description of Related Art
Along with the development of technologies, electronic apparatuses in the market have been developed to offer different functions in order to meet different user requirements. A user may install multiple operating systems (OS) in an electronic apparatus in order to achieve different functions. For example, both the Mac OS and the MS Windows OS may be installed in an electronic apparatus. Generally speaking, there are two methods to switch between two OSs. One method is to enter another OS by re-starting the electronic apparatus, and the other method is to switch between two OSs by using a virtualization technology. Regarding to the re-starting the electronic apparatus, it means the electronic apparatus is turned off (power shutdown) first, and then the electronic apparatus is turned on again to load another OS.
For example, two OSs are run by a virtual machine software (i.e., a virtual OS is adopted for controlling hardware behaviours and providing information to the two OSs) so that the first OS and the second OS become two client OSs of the virtual OS. Accordingly, the electronic apparatus can switch between the first OS and the second OS through the virtual OS. Additionally, the second OS may be started from the first OS through the virtualization technology. Namely, though a user can not see image of the first OS and consider he or she is using the second OS now, not the first OS, the first OS is still working when the system switches to the second OS, which is very power-consuming to the system.
The conventional techniques either spend a lot of time to re-start an electronic apparatus or waste a lot of power to switch between two OSs by using a middleware. Besides, when a middleware is adopted to switch between two OSs, the processor executes the two OSs at the same time and accordingly the processing speed of the processor is affected.